Identity Conflict Research Articles

Divided by Europe: affective polarisation in the context of European elections

As European integration has become politicised over the last several decades, scholars have paid keen attention to the role of identity in shaping political conflicts and contestation in Europe. This article investigates the microfoundation of the political divide over European integration by building on and extending theories of social identity and recent studies on affective polarisation. Large-scale survey experiment data from 25 European Union member states are analysed to explore the extent of divides over European integration. This analysis shows a statistically significant and substantively large magnitude of the divide based on European identity. Moreover, results show that this divide over European integration deserves particular attention as it is largely driven by out-group animosity, rather than in-group favouritism. Lastly, results show that electoral context, such as electoral salience, involvement in elections, elite polarisation, and the strength of Eurosceptic parties, influences the intensity of the European divide.

European Security Through the Prism of Identity and International Conflicts (The Case of the Republic of North Macedonia)

Abstract The European Union, as an intergovernmental union, has been trying to create the European security identity as a reflection of the European security perception among all the Member States for more than two decades. In the implementation of this theoretical determinant in the pragmatic security policy, the question of identity at the national level and the understanding of the preservation of national security in the interstate conflicts of the European Security Area has emerged. One of the key segments of the security and identity issue is integrated in the basic interests of national security, and that is the preservation of the biological substrate for nation’s survival. The Republic of North Macedonia is facing this issue which will be discussed in paper through both the theoretical and practical aspects.

Group Appeals of Parties in Times of Economic and Identity Conflicts and Realignment.

Party-group relations are today characterized by various forms of alignments. These include the persistence of traditional class alignments, the realignment of economic groups due to identity politics and alignments of groups at the centre of identity politics. This study analyses the group-based messaging of parties in relation to these three groups. We argue that, contrary to the catch-all party thesis, positive and negative group appeals of parties are (still) structured by parties' support among social groups and by groups either liked or disliked by their voters. Our argument is tested through a content analysis of election materials in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, combined with survey data. The results indicate that group appeals are indeed shaped by electoral support among social groups and attitudes towards them. Results also suggest that the former effect is present for traditionally aligned economic and identity politics groups, but not for realigned economic groups.

Conservative conservationists: reconciling conflicting identities on climate change

ABSTRACT Identities – how individuals think about themselves in the social world – are powerful drivers of political attitudes and behaviors. On highly polarizing issues such as climate change, political identities are powerful predictors of attitudes, behaviors, and policy preferences. However, other, non-partisan identities are also relevant to climate change attitudes, particularly when the identity is threatened by climate change. What happens when an individual has two salient identities informing opposing attitudes on a political issue? This study leverages a unique sample of politically conservative members of an environmental conservation organization – “conservative conservationists” – to understand how people reconcile conflicting identities to form their environmental attitudes and behaviors. Using qualitative data from interviews (n = 25) and participant observation, I document four strategies that participants use to reconcile identity conflicts and form environmental attitudes: distancing oneself from one of the conflicting identities; increasing deliberate political information seeking; redefining conceptions of an issue to fit with both identities; and creating a new identity that merges the non-conflicting aspects of the two identities. This research has implications for both the theoretical study of how identities influence political behavior and practical efforts to build bipartisan agreement on climate change.

A symbolic interactionist model of interpreter-facilitated communication—Key communication issues in face-to-face interpreting

Communication has been conceptualized and studied in a wide range of disciplines. However, very few communication theories or models have explicitly incorporated interpreting as an indispensable process to achieve communicative goals in intercultural and interlinguistic settings where communicative parties do not share a common language. By the same token, despite a strong emphasis of interpreting as “a communicative pas de trois”, there is much remaining to be explored in how existing communication theories and models could be drawn on and adapted to shed light on the key communication issues in interpreting studies. In view of such a distinct gap attributed to a striking lack of attention from both communication and interpreting scholars, as highlighted in this special issue, the author develops a symbolic interactionist model of interpreter-facilitated communication with a focus on exploring how an interpreter's identification with self-meanings and role management, which is key to their intrapersonal covert rehearsal process, impact on their interpreting decisions and behaviors. Through one-to-one interviews with three professional interpreters from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, it is found that the interpreters' identification with particular self-meanings at the intrapersonal level, which gives rise to identity integration, identity accumulation and disidentification strategies, has impacted on how they managed various challenges at the interpersonal level, such as the impossibility of the neutrality expectation, dealing with inappropriate non-interpreting demands from communicative parties, and resolving identity conflicts linked to communicative contexts.

"I don't see myself represented:" Strategies and considerations for engaging gay male Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander teens in research and HIV prevention services.

Significant efforts have been applied to the development of sexual health programs for minority young gay males. Given the absence of research with Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) gay teen males, this study was done to assess how to reach them. Interviews were conducted with 20 NHOPI gay males ages 19–24 as near peers that can inform reaching teens. Data was analyzed using the Reflexive Thematic Analysis method. Three themes were identified: (1) Culture is a crucial factor for recruitment and engagement—whether participants realized it or not; (2) Confidentiality is key in recruitment to provide a safe space for NHOPI gay teen male research participation; and (3) NHOPI gay teen males experience multiple identity conflicts that must be considered for recruitment and engagement initiatives. Online recruitment efforts are optimal and should reflect distinct NHOPI cultures. More research is needed when it comes to understanding the cultural acceptance and understanding of homosexuality in NHOPI communities and how to integrate cultural education into recruitment methods and interventions.

Where do I belong? Conflicted identities and the paradox of simultaneous stigma and social aggrandizement of military veterans in organizations

Military veterans often transition into the civilian workforce after serving in a nation’s armed forces. The process of integrating this unique class into organizations is directly affected by the social exchanges and interactions in the organization. Utilizing an in-depth interviews-based qualitative study of 40 veterans across 12 different organizations, and integrating social identity theory, we use template analysis to identify a paradox existent in social exchanges with other organizational members where veterans are simultaneously stigmatized and socially aggrandized. These paradoxical experiences interact with veterans’ self-conceptualization and social identities to reinforce expectations, cause culture shock and eventual turnover. We present a model of this tension, contributing to literatures on veterans in the workforce, paradox, and social identity theory as well as offering HR perspectives on this phenomenon.

Identity Conflicts and Negotiations: Narratives of Asian International Students’ Experiences in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This study draws on a narrative-based multiple case study approach to investigating three Asian international students’ experiences in a Hong Kong university, with a focus on their identity conflicts and negotiations. Informed by a poststructuralist perspective on identity and the Bakhtinian notion of dialogical self, the study found that the international students’ identity conflicts appear to be complex and varied and relate to different aspects of their identities, including their national, ethnic, academic and ‘non-local student’ identities. The findings suggest that their identity conflicts seem to arise primarily from a mismatch between their desired identities and the identities imposed by others. The findings also reveal that when dealing with identity conflicts, these students exercise their agency through (i) entering into an internal dialogue in response to others’ positioning of themselves in order to (re)interpret the self–other relations and (ii) taking strategic actions to contest the other-imposed identities and construct new and alternative identities. Taken together, the findings suggest that international students’ identity conflicts can be a potential avenue for identity transformation and (re)construction. The findings also call for the need to attend to the dialogical nature of identity and the role of agency in understanding international students’ identity conflicts and negotiations.

The 1782 Taiwan Zhangzhou-Quanzhou Feud: A Case Study on Qing Dynasty Communal Violence

With the aid of Chinese primary sources and supplementary secondary sources, this essay seeks to analyze the 1782 Taiwan “subethnic feud” between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou communities of Zhanghua County, which began with a personal dispute but soon escalated into a lethal rural conflict. The term “subethnic feud (分类械斗),” widely referring to early modern conflicts between different Chinese communities, emphasizes the dominant role of local identity conflicts. However, I argue that such outbursts of violence were complicated phenomena. Instead of the maturation of supposed “ethnic rivalries,” the escalation of the conflict from a personal dispute to a full-scale “rural war” is more likely the joint consequence of three contributing factors: the strong patterns of Taiwanese social organization along subethnic lines, mercenary and thug activities, and the inactivity of the local government.

Group Ties amid Industrial Change

AbstractCoethnics often work in the same industries. How does this ethnic clustering affect individuals’ political loyalties amid industrial growth and decline? Focusing on migrant groups, the author contends that ethnic groups’ distribution across industries alters the political allegiances of their members. When a group is concentrated in a growing industry, economic optimism and resources flow between coethnics, bolstering migrants’ confidence in their economic security and dissuading investments in local political incorporation. When a group is concentrated in a declining industry, these gains dissipate, leading migrants to integrate into out-groups with greater access to political rents. Analyses of immigrants near US coal mines in the early twentieth century support this theory. The article shows how ethnic groups’ distribution across industries shapes the evolution of group cleavages and illuminates how decarbonizing transitions away from fossil fuels may reshape identity conflicts.

Probing cell identity hierarchies by fate titration and collision during direct reprogramming

Despite the therapeutic promise of direct reprogramming, basic principles concerning fate erasure and the mechanisms to resolve cell identity conflicts remain unclear. To tackle these fundamental questions, we established a single‐cell protocol for the simultaneous analysis of multiple cell fate conversion events based on combinatorial and traceable reprogramming factor expression: Collide‐seq. Collide‐seq revealed the lack of a common mechanism through which fibroblast‐specific gene expression loss is initiated. Moreover, we found that the transcriptome of converting cells abruptly changes when a critical level of each reprogramming factor is attained, with higher or lower levels not contributing to major changes. By simultaneously inducing multiple competing reprogramming factors, we also found a deterministic system, in which titration of fates against each other yields dominant or colliding fates. By investigating one collision in detail, we show that reprogramming factors can disturb cell identity programs independent of their ability to bind their target genes. Taken together, Collide‐seq has shed light on several fundamental principles of fate conversion that may aid in improving current reprogramming paradigms.

Crowding-out Effect of SOEs on Market-based Organizational Forms in China: Implication for Korea

Purpose - We examine how an old organizational form interacts with a new one to maintain the former’s status and legitimacy during the change process in institutional logics. We focus on how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) crowd out three market-based organizational forms to maintain legitimacy and status during institutional change from state logic to market logic in China. In addition, we examine the moderating effects of export intensity and firm age of market-based enterprises on the aforementioned relationship.
 Design/Methodology/Approach - To test our hypotheses, we use a panel data set on manufacturing firms in China from 2011 to 2015. We utilize event history analysis because our dependent variable is the exit of market-based firms. We select the parametric Weibull model because it outperforms other survival models.
 Findings - Our results generally support our hypotheses. SOEs crowd out market-based organizational forms mainly owing to identity conflict. SOEs are likely to be hostile toward market-based firms with strong market identity, such as those with high export intensity and old market-based firms.
 Research - Implications Findings provide implications for policy makers and market-based enterprise managers in Korea. We highlight that Chinese and Korean SOEs are not precisely comparable but they are similar in several ways. We propose that policy makers in Korea develop and implement policy measures to control SOEs’ negative actions toward market-based firms and to dilute SOEs’ state identity. Lastly, we suggest that Korean market-based enterprise managers consider the effect of market identity on their survival and build connections with the government to strengthen market-based firms’ competitiveness and legitimacy.

CONFLICTS OF MEDIA REPRESENTATION; COMPARING DOMINANT THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Society develops through the process of struggles and disputes. The media serves as a platform for staging social conflict and struggle. Therefore, it is important to understand social developments through the many disputes that result in significant protests. Marxian perspective identifies social conflict as interaction with individuals and groups. The technological expansion enabled media to extend the interactions among individuals. Media constitutes ‘struggles over representation’ Shohat and Stam (2014) and ‘conflicts over identity Status’ Rousiley (2014), bringing out social and political issues before the public. These conflicts initiate debate over arguments among audiences. The article reviews various theoretical perspectives on the relationship between representation and identity in social conflict and what is the significance of media representation in the process. The proposed research recognizes a case and employs multiple theoretical perspectives to compare the results. Online news reports (N=100) of the Citizenship Amendment Act (Bill) protests were purposively selected as a case and evaluated using different theoretical frameworks. The researcher questions whether this conflict happened between majority and minority groups and what were the complementing factors for widespread protest across the country. The case study shows critical media literacy is a constructive, essential way with flexible practice in explaining the role of representation and identity in social conflicts for underprivileged groups. The study worries about the implication of critical media literacy as a citizen-centric practice, signifying more exploratory research.

Communicating cultural identity in the management of forest related conflicts in Eastern Mau, Kenya

AbstractConflict behavior is thought to result from attitudes. Attitude which is a tendency to favor or disfavor is thought to be a function of perceptions. Perceptions are influenced by our cultural identity. In Kenya, different communities have been involved in violent identity conflicts which peaked in 2007/2008 during the post‐election violence. The role of politics and natural resource competitions as sources for conflicts in Kenya has been widely exposed. This paper enriches the discourse on manifestation of conflict by an in‐depth analysis of how cultural identity is communicated drawing examples from communities residing adjacent to Eastern Mau forests complex in Kenya. The main research question is that, since inter‐group conflict involves identity competition, how are attitudes expressed in this context? Qualitative data sources were obtained for this study through key informant interviews and Focus Group Discussions. Data analysis was through thematization, content and linguistic analysis. Results from this study reveal that conflicts involving different ethnic communities have escalated over time. The study further reveals that attitudes are expressed through figures of communication such as stereotypes and nicknames, metaphors, and naming of places. Conflicts in Eastern Mau seemed to persist, vacillating between periods of relative peace and periods of escalation. Mediation has been proposed in recent literature as a sustainable solution for intractable conflicts. This paper suggests that more research is needed on traditional dispute resolution in Eastern Mau with a view to understanding how mediation could be integrated in the existing formal conflict resolution in the study area and beyond.

Exploring the professional teacher identity as ethical self-formation of two multilingual native English teachers

The past decades have witnessed an increasing number of studies documenting native English teachers’ (NETs’) challenges in professional development and collaboration with nonnative English teachers’ (NNETs’) across multiple educational contexts. There are also debates in TESOL regarding the essentialized dichotomy of NETs and NNETs with insufficient recognition of the educational and cultural experiences of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) / English as a second language (ESL). Little research has been conducted on the lived experiences of transnational multilingual NETs who work in heritage contexts; and how they position themselves when they conduct their teacher identity work and negotiate between heritage identity and NET identity. This study, drawing on the notion of ethical self-formation and its application in teacher identity research as a theoretical lens, addresses the gap by investigating the identity construction of two transnational NETs of Chinese ethnicity returning to their home context in Hong Kong to teach. The findings indicate that (1) the participants negotiated their multilingual identity and the monolingual NET identity ascribed in the workplace, (2) they developed counter-strategies to turn the knowledge of the local language and culture into resources in teaching, and (3) they agentively expanded the definition of NET and situated them in the full institutional and social context to consider their identity conflict and self-empowerment. The findings have implications for education policy to accommodate and value the plural-competences of NETs and NNETs.

The Right of Peoples to Reunification: Scientific and Practical Aspects of the Problem

The article contains the materials of a scientific discussion held in April 2022 by the National Communications Development Research Institution. The authors discuss the following issues: the concept of a “split people”; the right to reunification in the context of equality and the right of peoples to self-determination; historical precedents of the reunification of peoples; legal, social, economic, political and other grounds and mechanisms of reunification; the right to reunification and the problem of territorial integrity of the state; the role of external actors in unification processes; the conflict of national and state identities.

East Asian Varieties of Capitalism and Socio-Economic Inequality: South Korea and Hong Kong Compared

This article examines the deepening of socio-economic inequality manifested as dualisation in South Korea and deregulation in Hong Kong. It explains the extreme manifestations of inequality by reference to the nature of economic co-ordination, organised labour power and societal corporatism, and the politics of democratisation. It finds that South Korea’s legacy of state-orchestrated co-ordinated market economy favoured the retention of a manufacturing core despite globalisation. However, the neo-liberal inclinations of the state and big business groups led to the marginalisation of less privileged firms and workers. These inclinations reinforced the defensiveness of the small but strong labour organisations, preventing effective societal corporatism. These phenomena are fully understandable only with reference to the country’s conservative democratisation that divided the liberal and left political forces. The geo-political legacy also induced identity conflicts that overshadowed socio-economic issues. By contrast, Hong Kong’s liberal market economy coupled with the absence of security concern had allowed a radical de-industrialisation in the 1990s and wholesale casualisation in the 2000s. Divided by identity politics, organised labour was unable to challenge the trend. The same conflicts also led pro-China labour organisations to side with business interests in the post-1997 electoral autocracy and prevented the introduction of more fundamental reforms.

Moving to the Next Stage: Clarifying Constructs and Integrating Theory in Identity Research

Identity is a key organizational construct that “can be linked to nearly everything” (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008: 5); subsequently, within the organizational and behavioral sciences, it has garnered much scholarly attention. A wide array of identity-based processes and experiences have been studied, including the processes whereby identities are formed (i.e., identity construction) and altered (i.e., identity work), as well as various identity-implicating experiences, such as identity threats and opportunities, and identity conflict. This tremendous scholarly interest has resulted in myriad studies and numerous identity-related constructs. The proliferation of and lack of clarity among identity-related concepts resulting from this prolonged theory building stage has contributed to construct proliferation and a lack of clarity among identity-based concepts. Further, a lack of integration across identity-based studies makes it difficult to generalize research findings and contributes to an absence of encompassing models. Continuing this fragmented approach will contribute to conceptual ambiguity and confusion for the field, decreasing researchers’ confidence in the knowledge generated and inhibiting further progress. This symposium aims to advance identity research by fostering greater clarity and theoretical integration among identity-related constructs and processes. Presentations focused on identity resources and identity coherence address this theme via identity construction and its outcomes, and papers on identity enactment and identity conflict integrate existing knowledge pertaining to existing identities. As a whole, this symposium forges a pathway towards the next stage in this research: construct convergence (via definitional clarity and measurement development) and more theory testing. Oh, I Need (to be) That!: A Model of Identity Resource Creation Presenter: Mailys George; IESE Business School Presenter: David Sluss; ESSEC Business School Capturing Identity Dynamics: A Network-Based Approach to Identity Construction Processes Presenter: Karoline Strauss; ESSEC Business School Presenter: Julija Mell; Erasmus U. Rotterdam Presenter: Frederik Anseel; UNSW Sydney Business School, Australia Latent Identities: Internalizing a Role without “Doing” It Presenter: Elise B. Jones; U.S. Coast Guard Academy Presenter: Judith R Gordon; Boston College Identity Conflict in the Workplace: An Integrative Review Presenter: Heather Ciara Vough; George Mason U. Presenter: Teresa Cardador; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Brianna Barker Caza; U. of North Carolina at Greensboro Presenter: Emily D. Campion; U. of Iowa

Losing While Gaining: A COR Perspective of Organizational and Occupational Identifications

Drawing on the multiple identities research and conservation of resources (COR) theory, this research investigates both a losing and a gaining effect of dual identifications (i.e., employees’ simultaneous identification with organization and occupation). In particular, we introduce two important but unrecognized characteristics—the commensurateness and aggregation of the strength of organizational and occupational identifications and explain how a high commensurateness will drain employees’ vigor resources, while a high aggregation will replenish employees’ social support resources. We additionally examine how identity conflict will moderate the relationships between dual identifications and vigor/social support resources, and how these two types of resources will further mediate the relationships between dual identifications and three important individual outcomes (i.e., job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and subjective well-being). We used a multi-wave, multi-source survey study to test our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Effect of Sustainability Tension and Sustainability Synergy on Cooperative Performance

Interacting with value chain partners on sustainability is a multi-faceted issue, as its implementation frequently results in the formation of different identity conflicts and synergies. Individuals performing multiple job roles are pulled between many personal and corporate aspirations, as a generic product adds to the sales and net income whereas a sustainability offering contributes to the environment and society. In Study 1, 321 SME employees were asked to identify with a sustainability and non-sustainability offering they sell to their channel partner to understand how multiple identities (sustainability tension and sustainability synergy) within employees’ impact channel cooperative performance. As the key cognitive and motivational process through which tension/synergy identities can enact channel member’s behavior, we also examined the role of self -efficacy and perspective-taking. With two experimental studies, the causal inference was supplemented to strengthen the findings from field investigation. The results found independent effects of sustainability conflict and sustainability synergy on self-efficacy, perspective-taking and cooperative performance. Perspective-taking does not act as a mediator, whereas self-efficacy does. We observed that the negative effect of sustainability tension is reduced when self-efficacy is high, and the positive effect of sustainability synergy is reduced with low self-efficacy. The research explains the impact of multiple (conflicting and synergizing) identities within individual employees on cooperative performance in channels during interpersonal interactions.